Happy Halloween

I couldn't come up with a good sheep costume this year, but that sure doesn't mean everyone has to skip the pumpkin party!  

"Sure looks like we're going to have to skip the party!"

Just give me a minute, guys.

Stellaluna helped me pick out a few pumpkins this afternoon.

And Baaxter and Thelma got first dibs before the crowd got too unruly.

Pumpkins have become a favorite treat.  Maybe not as universally loved as Vanilla Wafers, but the fans are big fans.

Big Moose is a big fan.

And wasn't afraid to let everyone know!

Pinto had to think about it for a minute, but he quickly remembered.

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Remember the little swallowtail caterpillar?  He/she is still here, munching away on the carrot tops, showing no signs of turning into a chrysalis (!).  I decided to carve a butterfly pumpkin as a little encouragement.  And now, looking at the picture, the makeshift greenhouse almost looks like a ghost costume :-D.

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Blooms, Butterflies, Bugs And Bats

The best news I have is how many butterflies I've seen this summer.  I have had years where I could count on one hand the number of monarchs and swallowtails I've seen.  A few years now where I could probably count them on two hands.  This year I've lost count!

I've seen monarchs (sometimes as many as four) almost every day for a month or so and I'm finding multiple caterpillars out on the milkweed plants.  I haven't seen a chrysalis yet, but maybe if I put that in writing I'll see one on my way to the house this evening ;-).

Not only are the monarch visits up, I've had more swallowtails than I've ever had here.  Stella used to get pretty ones on the butterfly bushes at her house, but I'd never seen a zebra down here and I've seen two this summer.  

We've also had many, many smaller butterflies of all shapes and sizes, several hummingbird moths and more hummingbirds than normal as well.  I put in some salvias this year and they love those big blue blooms.

The bats have been happy this summer too.  We've been overrun by mosquitos, so the bats have been busy.  

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Today has had just a hint of fall in the air so maybe the end of this horrible summer is in sight.  In the meantime, here's a new fun and easy puzzle for you.  

Speaking of puzzles, I'd LOVE to know who works all the puzzles at 300 pieces :-D.  If you don't want to use your name online, shoot me an email if you'd like to raise your hand.  

Blooming

Auntie Reg has been caring for her family Night Blooming Cereus for over 20 years.  In all that time, the plant had never flowered.  The last bloom had been in 2000 in it's previous location.  After my plant started blooming a few years ago, she brought hers over here in hopes it would be happier and finally bloom as well.

I looked back through the blog to find a post to link with the story about one of my bloom(s) and can't find a single reference.  I know I've taken tons of pictures of them over the years and I think it started blooming before I got lazy with the blog, so I'm stumped.  I enjoyed looking back for a bit though and I encourage you to do that some time.

Back to the present, Reg's plant has been here for at least three, maybe four years now.  No blooms.  It's big and gangly and paired with my similar sized plant, takes up an incredible amount of room indoors throughout the winter.  I told her it needed to go back to her home this fall.

I have a huge ornamental orange (that was supposed to be a lemon) tree that I've carried with me for over 30 years.  At about year 20, both Tim and I were getting pretty weary.  We thought it was Really Big.  As we carried it out that spring, I told Tim I was going to leave it out and let it pass with the first hard frost in the fall.

After over 20 years of never even a hint of a bloom (or any other redeeming quality other than just being a tree...which is really enough if you aren't having to be carried in and out on a shipping dolly) it panicked and by mid summer was covered in blooms and has been blooming and producing oranges ever since.  It's now almost 9' tall and we know now what Really Big really is.

Back to the flower, about two weeks ago I noticed a tiny bud forming on one of the leaves!  After all these years!  Apparently plants don't need to be talked nice to.  They need threatening.  I maybe should have tried that with my pumpkins.

We watched it grow and I built elaborate fences around the front of the Wool House to try to keep naughty chickens, pillaging sheep, clumsy cats and excitable dogs from breaking it off.  Then a fluke storm blew through and sent it crashing to the ground.  Miraculously it survived.

Bloom day!  What starts as a tiny bud grows into a huge bud about the size of a fist and it hangs down about six inches from the leaf.  The bloom will start opening as night falls and continues to open for several hours.  We made a party out of it :-D.

The weather was perfect and a small fire kept us comfortable and entertained between flower checks.  20 and Pip joined us :-).  

I've seen quite a few blooms now, but they never fail to amaze.  And the fragrance!  The white above the flower is not part of it.  That's a scrap of wool felt used to pad a branch I'd tied up to keep it from interfering with the bloom.

As the bats flew out I brought Stellaluna out to join them (bottom left).

We all watched the flower and the still almost full blue super moon and listened to the night bugs and a tiny screech owl and the fire crackling and it was just a fantastic night.

20 made sure Archie didn't do anything stupid.

Pip enjoyed getting a closer look.

And one last August fog rolled in just before midnight.

 

Gone Batty

Knitting small stuffed animals seems to be my go to summer project.  Remember that cute frog from last year?  This year designer Claire Garland came out with a bat pattern.  You know that one went straight to the top of my queue!

The pattern called for size 0 needles and fingering weight yarn.  The smallest needle I have is a size 2 so I picked out some sport weight yarn knowing I could still knit the pattern, but that my bat would just be a little bigger.  

The pattern was well written and fun and knit up easily.  When I got to the part where I needed to cut out the felt wings I realized that my bigger bat was not going to fit those smaller wings so I drew a bigger design.  

Since I was drawing a new wing pattern anyway, I changed a couple of elements.  First, since mine was now a big brown bat, I edited the wing design to more closely match that species.  I also thought it would be cute if the wings would fold around the body so the bat could go to sleep and changed the placement just a bit so they would tuck cleanly under her face.

I didn't have any matching brown felt so I took a piece of gray and dyed it myself.  For as "anti-colorful" as I am, I really do like to play with making colors for special projects. Instead of stitching the bat's "fingers" as folds in the felt, I used a tiny crochet hook and made crochet chains that I then needle felted and stitched them into the wings.

One last thing I tweaked was to insert short pipe cleaners into the toes.  I did that with a needle and just threaded them down through the foot and out the toes.  I left them sticking out a bit on the ends, folding them up behind the toes when she's awake and ready to fly and unfolding them when she's ready to go to sleep so they can securely wrap around a branch or a loom rod :-).

The next fun part was trying to figure out how to get the best pictures of her.  I started out in the Wool House, but that's one of the worst places to try to get accurate pictures of dark yarns...so I moved outside...where it's also really hard to get pictures of dark yarns if the sun is still shining, even if you move into the shade...so I made one last effort last night after the sun dropped below the horizon.

"Miss Bat?" (Now named Stellaluna :-)

"Yes?"

"I know it's a bit early yet, but I was wondering if you could fly about for a bit so I could take your picture."

"No problem.  I'd be happy to!"

Bats really are pretty agreeable if you aren't yelling at them and trying to swat them with towels.  Bats are very beneficial and, like so many other animals, are really struggling now.  I love having bats in our barn and I encourage everyone to do what they can to help protect these hard workers.

I used the Rocky and Jared sons and daughters Lamb Camp Legacy dark gray/brown yarn for the body. For the belly patch and the details around her ears I un-plied a strand of the medium gray and held it double with the dark brown.

The eyes are black glass and glued into the eye holes.  I've never tried that before, but it seems to be working just fine.  For the nose and mouth I took a short strand of the dark brown yarn and dyed it black.  I didn't add any fangs or teeth because she wanted to be a smiling bat :-).

The felt, before and after.  The felt is 100% wool I believe.  If it's not, it's only a very small percentage of acrylic.  It took the dye wonderfully.  It did shrink a little, but I was prepared for that.  Once it was dry I took a steam iron to it and it pressed into a luxurious fabric.  

Auntie Reg found a perfect button in her button box.  Not only is the size and color perfect, but if you can zoom in enough, the design looks very similar to the "spokes" of the bat's "fingers"!  A little early evening sunlight shining through topped it all.  We used velcro to fasten the wings/cloak so we didn't need to make a button hole.

As the barn bats started flying out last night, I set the little knitted bat out on the fence so she could watch them and she decided to stay out all night.  I hope she had a fun out flying around with them

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.Good morning, Miss Bat.  Sleep well :-).

Bat Tales

That blurred dot in the sky is a bat ;-).

The only thing more fun than watching bats swoop out of the barn as night falls is watching them swoop back in as the dark fades in the morning.  Both appear to me to be at full speed.  Swoosh swoosh swoosh and then (whoosh!) under the quilt square.

Morning is finally starting to arrive noticeably later these last few days.  I'm cautiously optimistic that I've almost made it through summer.  Yesterday I was able to watch the bats for almost ten minutes after I did my early morning barn check.

At the very end there was only one bat still out and it stayed out grabbing some extra insects for several minutes. Suddenly another bat flew in from the northwest.  They met in the air and swirled around each other for a few seconds, not making contact, and then one bat flew into the barn and the other headed out across the fields to the southeast.

My feeling is the bat I had been watching flew into our barn and the other bat was just passing through, but the bat I had been watching very well could have been an intruder who had just gotten run off. It didn't seem like an aggressive interaction however.

Regardless, there must be another bat colony nearby. Maybe they have branched off of our bats and the two were friends or relatives just checking in, sharing some news.  I'll poke around in the run in sheds and see if I can find any signs.

Like A Diamond In The Sky

I've spent the last several nights watching for the Comet NEOWISE.  I finally realized that I was probably missing it due to all the trees around our house, so last night I packed up the dogs and my camera (but forgot the bug repellent and my binoculars) and headed for the hill in the back field.

About the bug repellent...I really don't notice many bugs around the house and barn at night.  If the back porch light is on, then yes, but if not, they really aren't a problem.  Bug repellent never even crossed my mind.  The binoculars...never crossed my mind either but that's a mind issue, not an experience issue.

Turns out the bats are taking care of a LOT of bugs each night.  The back field was brutal.  Between not having any luck spotting the comet and knowing even if I did I wouldn't be able to see it very well without the binoculars and The Bugs, I finally bailed around 10:30 and headed back to the barn.  

As I drove through the gate next to the barn I looked up and just like finding a four leaf clover, there it was.  Right over the Wool House.  I took this picture with my iPhone.  I'll try again tonight to get a "big girl camera" shot...or maybe I'll just watch it through the binoculars and enjoy it.  

You can see it pretty well with just your naked eye, but the tail is really incredible with some zoom. Here's a link that might help you spot it.  Sounds like we have a couple more days of visibility.  Go out and find it.  Don't forget your binoculars...and your bug spray if you don't have a hard working bat colony.

Bats, Bags And Blooms

During a late winter trip to Wilson's Nurseries in Frankfort, I impulse bought a packet of cotton seeds.  I started (or tried to) the entire packet, but the seed starter kit I used was a disaster :-(.  Only six plants made it to the garden.  I had to mark them so I didn't grab them thinking they were weeds.  

Once they started blooming though there was no confusion.  I had no idea cotton bloomed so pretty! Some of the flowers are white.  Some are white and turn pink.  Some seem to start pink.  I wish I had a time lapse camera set out there to say for sure.  The blooms don't last very long and drop to the ground.

The plants are waist high.

I think these "hands" are holding a new bud.

But these are holding what I'm guessing is the start of a cotton boll!

I don't know what kind of harvest I'm going to have with only six plants, but I've had enough fun so far to warrant giving them another try next spring.  I'm going to make my own starter pots though and not use the kits from TSC.

*     *     *     *     *

I'm glad I asked you all to count the bats.  I thought we only had around 20!  I try to count them but get distracted by watching where one goes and miss a couple more coming out or Baaxter walks over to talk to me or...  They haven't moved into the new house yet, but putting it up there didn't seem to scare them away.  Whew!

Windswept Farm won the drawing!  Send me an email with your mailing address and I'll get one of the new Punkin's Patch bags in the mail to you right away :-).

Full House

If you are following my Instagram feed, you probably did wonder what on earth we were up to last night.

"What are you doing over there?" Andy

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Andy reminds me so much of Graham Lamb...which is why I am set up on the outside of the gate 😉. What AM I doing?

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Remember the barn quilt bats?  They set up camp behind the barn quilt again this spring, but about a month ago I stopped seeing bat droppings on the ground and I was afraid we'd lost them all.  There were never very many and bats are really struggling these days :-/.

I was very happy and relieved to still see a couple bats leaving the barn in the days to follow.  I tried to poke around to see if I could figure out where they'd moved, but had no luck.  I didn't worry too much about it though.  I was just happy they were still here, alive and well.

When the weather turned so hot and humid that I was locking the sheep out of the barn in the late afternoon to force them into the shade (the sun beats down on the outer shed) and give the barn a chance to dry out, I'd sit behind the barn with them for awhile at night before I let them back in.

Right as it got dark, whoosh whoosh whoosh...  So that's where the bats were living!  I again poked around the back part of the barn, but couldn't find them.  Were they in the rafters?  Under the eaves? I still couldn't find them, the sneaky little bats, but I was on to them ;-).

Last week I happened upon some tell tale signs of bats, guano.  I'd come around the back corner of the barn and noticed it on the gate for the last stall on the horse side of the barn.  Huh.  Right under the bat house.  How about that.

My brother gave us that bat house (five or six?) years ago.  No one had ever used it.  We didn't have any other suitable locations to try moving it to, so we'd just left it.  After all these years, it was now occupied.  And not by just a couple bats!

I took this video last night.  Tim noticed one bat flying from the front of the barn over to the bat house and then everyone started leaving the house.  We are wondering if that was an adult waking all the kids up?

How many can you count?  Leave your number in the comments and we'll have a drawing for one of the new drawstring bags.  The bats aren't named, but we can be thankful that they are keeping so many bugs away from all the named sheep :-).

Here is a shorter, closer up video from the night before.  Isn't this cool?

After everyone cleared out and was safely off to work, Saint Tim got to work installing a second bat house.  He put it next to the original house, about 12" away.  I'm a bit worried that it is too close, but he had to work around a tobacco vent.  

I've emailed a bat conservation group to check.  Hopefully he won't have to go back up and move it although he did say he was less scared of heights when it was too dark to see how far he might fall ;-).  Reason #1694 for why we call him Saint Tim!

Everyone's Flying The Coop...Or Nest

"What do you think?"

"Looks pretty far down there."

"You go first."

"No, YOU go first!"

"Ain't nobody going nowhere just yet, so y'all just pipe it back down."

They are close though!  This is the first year we've had barn swallows.  I have to say, between the martins, the bats and the swallows, we are pretty happy with our (lack of) bug situation and they are all fun to watch as well :-).

The Batty Sheep Lady

I've been noticing a row of black "rice" at the barn entrance.  Seemed an odd place for mice so I googled bat poop and sure enough, our bats are back :-D.

They are definitely living behind the barn quilt.  I saw three leave the other night at 9:25.  They whoosh, whoosh, whooshed out from the bottom at Top Speed.  Just fascinating!  I'd love to catch a video of that, but it's too dark.  Hopefully there are more than three, but three is better than none if not.  

Bullwinkle and I camped out in the barn last night.  Blossom aka BaBa has pretty willingly volunteered to be the auntie again this year.  We all had some vanilla wafers (probably her main motivation ;-) before bed and it all went pretty well.  The end is near :'-(.

What To Do About The Beloved Barn Quilt, I Mean Bat House

In giving folks directions to our farm, I always say "Look for the big black tobacco barn with a barn quilt."  Now it's a barely black barn and the barn quilt is starting to disintegrate :-(.  It used to be just me and Saint Tim discussing the situation.  Now everyone asks about it.

While it may seem rude to think of friends, family, and yes, complete strangers ragging on a quilt hanging on someone else's barn, it's actually more of a curiosity than a complaint.  The bottom of the quilt is 40' in the air.  Yes, what ARE we going to do?

We hired a tree service with a huge bucket truck to hang it in September of 2007.  It was a big job. He'd have to come back out to take it down.  I'd have to re-paint a new quilt and that was a big job as well.  We'd have to coordinate all that with getting the barn re-painted, which is...another big job. And then we have to hire Mr. Clifford to come back out to hang the new quilt. And then the plot thickens.

The other morning, dark and early, the day we dyed Renny's wool, I was up at the barn dividing her fleece and setting out what amounts I wanted to dye.  Around 6:00 I noticed some swooping and fluttering out front and some weird chirping noises.  The bats!

We've hosted a (sadly) very small bat community since we've lived here.  At best count the most bats we've had is probably five.  For the last couple of years I've only regularly seen two I think. I've assumed they lived in the barn, but I've never seen them or any signs.

The curiosity has been killing me and here they were, flying in after a busy night!  I quick stepped it out into the driveway to watch.  They swooped and rose and swooped and circled in front of me. Definitely more than two but they were so quick I couldn't keep track. Then one would whoosh and disappear.  More swooping and then whoosh, another gone.  Where were they going?

Up under the barn quilt!  No wonder they weren't using the bat house we'd hung on the side of the barn.  They were already installed in the barn quilt bat house out front.  Now I definitely don't want to take the quilt down and I'm leery of even painting the front of the barn.  I need to get up with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife to see if they can figure out what kind of bats we have and if they will migrate for the winter.  Until then, we're just going to stay shabby.

Of course, now I'm obsessed with seeing the bats come in and out.  I haven't made any more pre-dawn trips to the barn, but I know I will.  First I wanted to see them fly out!  I set myself up the other night with a concrete block chair on the utility trailer aka spaceship.  Camera at the ready. And I waited.

While I waited, here's the back field before the hay was cut.  Complete with the all too familiar thunderheads building.

Graham and Daniel through the barn portal.  I took some pictures of Liddy and Blossom and Lila through the new shop windows portal, but they were pretty uninspiring.  

So I waited.  And the sun set.  Notice the difference in light between the first and last pictures? And I waited some more, watching very carefully.  And then all the bats were flying around and I didn't see a single one come out.  The end.